4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is among the films overlooked by the Academy

Each year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, to give the institution its full self-important title, throws a sop to those countries which have the temerity to make films in their own languages. These foreign language film Oscars are merely a small sideshow to the main event - the handing out of Oscars principally to Hollywood movies and stars.

This year, the Academy obtusely decided not to nominate any of the cream of the crop of non-English language films - 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania), Edge of Heaven (Germany), Persepolis (France), Secret Sunshine (Korea) and Silent Light (Mexico). It opted, as usual, for content over style, the academic over the innovative, the respectable over the adventurous. The Counterfeiters (Austria) was the predictable winner (the Holocaust is always good for an award) among the five equally conventional nominees.

It continues the whole sorry history of the foreign language film Oscars. Here are some examples. In 1953, the Academy decided it couldn't find a foreign film worthy of the award despite the fact that Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari, Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot's Holiday and Henri Clouzot's The Wages of Fear were released that year.

It's absurd, but not surprising, that none of the films of Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Pier Paulo Pasolini, Jacques Rivette, Yasujiro Ozu, Nagisa Oshima, Robert Bresson, Abbas Kiarostami, Andre Tarkovsky, Manoel de Oliveira and Theo Angelopoulos, to name but a few, have never even been nominated.

In 1962, the Academy inexplicably went for a minor French film called Sundays and Cybele, directed by Serge Bourgignon, who had made nothing before and has made nothing since of any consequence. And this was the year that saw Truffaut's Jules and Jim, Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7, Michelangelo Antonioni's The Eclipse, Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie and Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water.

Other unworthy and now forgotten recipients of the statuette were Black and White in Colour (1976), Madame Rosa (1977), Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1980), To Begin Again (1982) and Dangerous Moves (1984). But the rot really set in at the start of the 1990s with Meditarraneo (1991), followed by Indochine (1992), Belle Epoque (1993), Burnt by The Sun (1994), Antonia's Line (1995), Kolya (1996), Character (1997) and the meretricious Life is Beautiful (1998). In the past few years, the awards have hovered between the acceptable (eg Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother, 1999) and the mediocre (Nowhere in Africa, 2002, and Tsotsi, 2005).

It wasn't until 1983 that a non-English language film won more than the one award beyond its designated category. Bergman's Fanny and Alexander gained Oscars for art direction, cinematography and costume design but, preposterously, James L Brooks for Terms of Endearment was preferred to Bergman for the best director award. In 2001, unusually, Ang Lee, won best director for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, which nobody could accuse of being an "art house" movie.

Logically, the so-called foreign language film Oscars category should be eliminated, and all films regardless of language (as for performers) should qualify for all the awards. However, if that was the case, the Academy would probably continue to select the less good non-English language films to prevent those damn foreigners sweeping the boards every time.